1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle-mounted record medium reproducing apparatus equipped with a control panel which is tiltable to cover an insertion opening for a record medium in a front surface of a reproducing apparatus body and further equipped with a personal computer function.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, in vehicle-mounted record medium reproducing apparatus such as a CD players, it is known to provide such apparatus with a motor-driven and tiltable control panel in a front surface of the reproducing apparatus body to cover an insertion opening for a record medium. In this type of apparatus, a motor for tilting the control panel is provided within the reproducing apparatus body. In addition, vehicle-mounted record medium reproducing apparatus is known in which a tiltable supporting plate is provided in the front surface of the reproducing apparatus body to cover the record medium insertion opening and a control panel is detachably fitted through a connecting member to the supporting plate. This type of apparatus is designed such that, when the vehicle driver leaves the motor vehicle, the control panel can be removed to prevent theft.
In recent years, there has been a tendency to combine types of systems such as a vehicle-mounted audio systems with vehicle-mounted navigation systems. An extension of this is record medium reproducing apparatus capable of performing various kinds of operations such as a personal computer function, security and radiocommunication.
Vehicle-mounted record medium reproducing apparatus having a personal computer function is expected to use a compact flash card including, for example, a memory card, a pager receive card, and other cards. Due to mounting on a motor vehicle, improvement of the cards in operational performance, safety, vibration resistance and others is essential.
In addition, because the number of parts such as electric devices increases substantially in such apparatus, there is no room to provide a motor for tilting a control panel in the reproducing apparatus body.
In the case of a mechanism for manually tilting the control panel, after the control panel is tilted manually, an operation is conducted, such as inserting a record medium into the reproducing apparatus body or ejecting the record medium from the reproducing apparatus.
However, in the prior construction, even if the supporting plate is tilted to any position, the apparatus may be damaged. Because the control panel is easily detachable and may, for example, be removed from the supporting plate in the middle of the ejecting operation of a CD, a cassette tape or the like, the CD or the cassette tape being in ejecting operation runs into this control panel, so that either of them may be damaged.
Furthermore, since the supporting plate is constructed with a metallic plate, if the control panel is removed from this supporting plate when the supporting plate is in a tilted condition, the metallic plate of the supporting plate protrudes forwardly, and hence, there is a possibility that an accident may occur. For example, the driver may be injured if his fingers touch the supporting plate.
Still further, the operation of pressing an eject switch for ejecting a record medium from the reproducing apparatus body is troublesome, and the installation of the eject switch increases the manufacturing cost accordingly.
Moreover, such vehicle-mounted record medium reproducing apparatus may require a start key to be used to operate the personal computer function, a Mayday key to receive information on the occurrence of an emergency situation on a security system, and others. The key configurations of these types of keys must have excellent operational performance.